Monday Montage is a weekly meme I cooked up in order to create a redeemable quality for my least favorite day. Pick a book you're reading or have recently finish and concoct a list of images, videos, songs... whatever you'd like... based on the characters and storyline of that book...
My montage this week is inspired by Enclave by Ann Aguirre:
Of course, none of the images are mine... just so ya know :)... I always wish I could find more!! So funny :) Hope that lifted your "Monday Blues" a bit.. I know it evoked a few giggles out of me this morning :)
The year is 2032, sixteen years after a deadly virus—and the vaccine intended to protect against it—wiped out most of the earth’s population. The night before eighteen-year-old Eve’s graduation from her all-girls school she discovers what really happens to new graduates, and the horrifying fate that awaits her.
Fleeing the only home she’s ever known, Eve sets off on a long, treacherous journey, searching for a place she can survive. Along the way she encounters Caleb, a rough, rebellious boy living in the wild. Separated from men her whole life, Eve has been taught to fear them, but Caleb slowly wins her trust...and her heart. He promises to protect her, but when soldiers begin hunting them, Eve must choose between true love and her life.
I've seen mixed reviews towards this book, from bad to worse to fabulous... I tend to lean toward the side of "loved it ~ would recommend..." I nabbed this book in the audio version, as I was going on a trip that included a long, solo drive, and I thought "why not?". Not sure what made me pick Eve, as I scrolled through the iTunes market, but there it was, and I'm glad I did a quick point and click and hit the road with Anna Carey's novel.
I'm a huge fan of Dystopian fiction in any shape or form, but in this case, it's a plague that's wiped out life as we knew it, paving the way for anyone power-hungry enough to create a monarch-style government and call it good. What the King says goes, from rebuilding a city on the backs of orphans to repopulating the country through brutal "breeding practices." Pretty sick guy hiding behind a hopeful mask, but there are those who see the situation as it is. After all, what would a tyrant be without rebels to stand against him? These are the people Eve must learn to trust, even though everything in her upbringing screams at her not to.
Eve only knows life post-plague, and it's interesting to hear her wonder about things we take for granted every day such as movies, birthday cakes, and co-ed schools. She's booksmart, severely lacking in any type of survival skill, and she's completely naive. This got a little annoying, I will admit, but you have to remember how she was raised. She was taught that men are the enemy and will do whatever it takes to manipulate and destroy women. Not only that, she never thought she had to know how to do things like swim, hunt, and basically think outside the box. She's always done what she was told, believing that that's all she needed to do to flourish. Like I said ~ naive. However, all of this was ingrained into her from the time she arrived at the school as a very young child, so as much as I wanted to scream at her and ask her "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?", I had to remember her state of mind in order to understand her line of thought.
Of course, we have to have someone who brings Eve to the light, and that's where Caleb steps in. He's amused with Eve's seemingly silly distrust and reaction to him, but he just lets her accusing thoughts roll off of him with a monumental amount of patience. He doesn't put an active effort into changing her mind, but is just his wonderful self, allowing Eve to come up with her own judgements in her own time. Their relationship begins slowly ~ I didn't detect the dreaded "instalove" ~ as Caleb unknowingly earns her trust and begins to see that Eve may be slightly blinded by her former life in the schools, but she's willing to learn and do what it takes to survive.
I do want to take a sec to mention Arden... She is, by far, my favorite... She's badass, ruthless, sarcastic, and incredibly smart. She's got a slightly evil streak, but that makes her all the more lovable in my eyes. She's not blind to what's going on around her and she doesn't take what everyone tells her to believe at face value. Of course, she had more experience in the world outside the school's walls than Eve ever did, so maybe that's why she seems to know so much, but still ~ she knows what makes sense and what doesn't...
The writing style was fluid and, while I have a difficulty sometimes imagining the world created through audio books, I had no trouble envisioning everything that was happening to the very last detail. The storyline is heartbreaking and hopeful through and through. The horrific things these people go through day to day ~ it's amazing that they don't break. Constantly running and living from day to day, hoping that sunset won't be your last... It's astounding...
And the end... OH THE END! This pretty much sums up how I was feeling when that last paragraph breathed through the speakers....
Totally, totally blew my mind, and at that moment, I did kinda hate Eve, but I'll say no more on the matter to keep from spoiling it....
I really enjoyed this book and will definitely be moving on to round two. I can't even begin to make a prediction on how the storyline will continue, but I do hope to see Eve grow and become smarter in the ways of the world she knew so little about.. It'll be an interesting journey to unravel...
New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., have been abandoned.
The Bill of Rights has been revoked, and replaced with the Moral Statutes.
There are no more police—instead, there are soldiers. There are no more fines for bad behavior—instead, there are arrests, trials, and maybe worse. People who get arrested usually don't come back.
Seventeen-year-old Ember Miller is old enough to remember that things weren't always this way. Living with her rebellious single mother, it's hard for her to forget that people weren't always arrested for reading the wrong books or staying out after dark. It's hard to forget that life in the United States used to be different.
Ember has perfected the art of keeping a low profile. She knows how to get the things she needs, like food stamps and hand-me-down clothes, and how to pass the random home inspections by the military. Her life is as close to peaceful as circumstances allow.
That is, until her mother is arrested for noncompliance with Article 5 of the Moral Statutes. And one of the arresting officers is none other than Chase Jennings—the only boy Ember has ever loved.
Article 5 is another of the increasingly popular novels of the apocalyptic variety ~ a genre that I've become obsessed with. The U.S. is no longer the 'land of the free,' but is oppressed by a government comparable to Puritan law. Ember, a regular girl trying to live as normal a life as she kind, finds her home and everything she knows ripped from her fingertips. It's only then she discovers how the world really is and who she needs to be to survive it.
I'm not gunna lie, Ember had me ripping my hair out. She began as this completely naive little girl who thought any kind of violence was abhorrent even when the honorable Chase used it to keep her safe from trash who'd like nothing more than to rape and murder her. I wanted to slap her silly and throw her to the wolves if that's what she wanted. Her childish actions were, for lack of a better word, completely *annoying*, and I couldn't understand some of her ridiculous logic. However, to contradict my previous opinion, Ember grew as a character from a little girl blinded by the safety of her former life to a tough woman who stopped lying to herself and finally saw the world as it truly was. It was then I realized all her actions up until that point were based on the reality of her memories ~ she couldn't let go of her past until there was nothing left.
The relationship between Ember and Chase was...intense ~ but unlike a lot of novels I've read recently, it didn't feel forced or unbelievable. One of my favorite aspects were the triggered flashbacks Ember experiences on her travels with Chase who, to Ember, seems like a completely different person. We get a chance to see how their relationship grew, how they were torn apart, and compare it to the tension between them now. It added that element of raw emotion that I can't get enough of, and in addition to the action, suspense, and horror, made for a very textured read.
This is obviously the first book in a series, and I have a feeling the next book is going to be even more exciting. As a debut novel, Kristen Simmons couldn't have done any better. Her writing style flows perfectly and I found myself unable to put it down. The storyline grows and evolves, taking you from one world to another, and the characters ~ big or small ~ are so believable and dynamic that it is impossible not to form a connection with them.
